Learning to Walk in the Light—Without Tripping Over One Another

 

A sermon for the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity - 1st Service of the Week

Readings: Isaiah 58:6-11, Ephesians 4:1-13, John 12.31-36

We are a curious gathering this evening.  Not curious as in odd—though that may apply in places—but curious in the older sense: people drawn together by interest, by desire, by choice.  Nobody here has wandered in by mistake, thinking this was a parish coffee morning or a rehearsal for Songs of Praise.  We are here because we believe, in some form or another, that Christian unity matters.

And that already tells us something important.  Unity, at least at the start, is not imposed.  It is chosen.  Or perhaps more accurately, it is responded to.  Because long before any of us decided that unity was a good idea, God had already decided it was necessary.

St Paul reminds us of that with his characteristically blunt insistence:  “There is one body and one Spirit… one Lord, one faith, one baptism.”  Not six bodies, divided by worship style.  Not twelve spirits, divided by churchmanship.  One.  Singular.  Undeniable.  Unity, Paul says, is not an aspiration on the Church’s to-do list.  It is the underlying reality we spend most of our time trying to avoid.

Which may sound harsh, but let’s be honest—British Christians have become quite good at avoiding one another.  We do it very politely, of course.  We smile.  We form committees.  We hold joint services once a year in January.  And then we retreat, slightly relieved, back to our familiar buildings, our familiar liturgies, our familiar ways of doing things “properly”.

We reassure ourselves that separation is simply a matter of preference.  Some like robes, some like guitars.  Some like silence, some like choruses with hand actions.  Some like bishops, some like strong coffee and a flipchart.  And all of that is true—up to a point.  Diversity is not the enemy of unity.  Paul is very clear about that.  The Body grows precisely because it has many parts.

The problem begins when difference stops being gift and starts being justification.  When it becomes the reason we don’t have to listen too carefully, or walk too closely, or bear too much with one another.

That’s why Paul’s advice is so disarmingly practical.  He doesn’t say, “Sort out your ecclesiology.”  He says, “Walk in a manner worthy of your calling, with humility and gentleness, with patience.”  In other words, unity does not begin with a theological breakthrough; it begins with the cultivation of character.  With learning how not to roll our eyes when another Christian prays in a way we find slightly embarrassing.  With resisting the urge to mutter “well, that’s very them” under our breath.

And into that very British, very human reality comes this extraordinary Armenian gift:  a service soaked in light.  Light from east to west.  Light kindled, shared, passed from hand to hand.  It is impossible to sit through this liturgy and remain entirely cerebral.  The theology arrives through the body.  Through flame.  Through warmth.  Through movement.

Which is exactly what the Gospel insists upon.  “Walk while you have the light,” Jesus says.  Not “admire it”.  Not “write a position paper about it”.  Walk.  Because light, in the Christian imagination, is not a spotlight exposing error.  It is a path that makes forward movement possible.

That matters in a country like ours, where the Church often feels tired, diminished, slightly unsure of itself.  We are tempted to think that unity is a luxury for better times—something we can return to once we’ve sorted out attendance figures, safeguarding policies, and the small matter of the roof.  But the Armenian Church tells a different story.  Unity there has been forged not in comfort, but in survival.  Not in cultural dominance, but in vulnerability.  And still the light has been shared.

Paul knows why this is hard.  Unity requires effort because love requires effort.  “Bearing with one another” is not romantic language.  It is workshop language.  It implies weight.  Strain.  The kind of love that does not always feel rewarding in the moment.  And yet this, Paul says, is how the unity of the Spirit is maintained—not created, but maintained.  Like a fire that must be tended, not assumed.

And here’s the gentle irony of our gathering tonight.  We are already more united than we often realise.  We have prayed the Lord’s Prayer together without footnotes.  We will confess the Nicene Creed without caveats.  We will receive light from the same flame.  The foundations are already there.  The question is not whether unity exists, but whether we are willing to trust it enough to live differently because of it.

In the UK, that might look gloriously ordinary.  Churches learning to share space rather than compete for it.  Christians speaking generously of one another in public rather than defensively.  Ecumenism not as an event, but as a habit.  Not dramatic gestures, but steady faithfulness.

Because “one hope of our calling” does not mean one strategy, one structure, or one way of being Church.  It means one destination.  That Christ is drawing all things—slowly, patiently, sometimes painfully—towards himself.

So as the candles are lit tonight, let us resist the temptation to see this as a symbol only.  It is also a rehearsal.  A practice run for a Church that chooses to walk in the light together, even when the path is unfamiliar, even when we would rather take a route we already know.

Light from Light, for light.  May we have the courage not only to admire that light, but—very Britishly, very imperfectly—to follow it, side by side.